Hospital changes brought to table

HEALTH CARE CONCERNS

Jennifer Bowman

Natalie Bubela, chief executive officer of Muskoka Algonquin Health Care, spoke to Gravenhurst residents about proposed changes coming to the Bracebridge and Huntsville hospitals in an attempt to balance the $2.4-million deficit in the budget.

LYNN EMMONS

GRAVENHURST - About 65 people attended Monday’s public information session about the future of hospital care in Muskoka.
Executives from Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) met with residents at the Gravenhurst Centennial Centre for two and a half hours.
The participants were attentive and listened carefully to the plan proposed by the MAHC board.
Natalie Bubela, chief executive officer at Muskoka Algonquin Health Care, outlined changes planned for the Bracebridge and Huntsville. She said 24 more beds at a Gravenhurst nursing home will complement plans for increasing continuing care beds at the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital.
The meeting was one of three in Muskoka to speak to residents about proposed changes in the Bracebridge and Huntsville hospitals to offset a $2.4-million deficit MAHC expects to face due to a change in provincial funding.
To address the expected deficit and attempt to increase funding coming to the hospitals, the board proposed to move all chemotherapy treatment to Huntsville, reduce critical-care beds in the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital from 48 to 38 and add six complex continuing care beds.
It also proposed to decrease Huntsville hospital’s critical-care beds from 37 to 32, take away all 10 of its continuing-care beds and add an integrated acute stroke rehab centre with 10 beds that could be used for other acute care patients if the beds aren’t filled with stroke victims.
Originally the proposal included moving obstetrics to one location, but that has since been removed.
Bubela said the continuing care beds, which are not for indefinite long-term care, will work well with an additional 24 beds that were recently added to Leisureworld in Gravenhurst, which are now open to applications.
They knew about the addition when they made the change, Bubela said.
Residents at the meeting were upset about the decision to move chemotherapy treatment to Huntsville.
Bubela said MAHC was directed to move chemotherapy treatment to one site instead of both hospitals as it now is, and they decided on the Huntsville site because in past years the number of people needing chemotherapy has been higher.
However, with the closure of the Orillia chemotherapy clinic, that has changed.
“About four months ago we started to see an incline here (at the Bracebridge hospital),” she said.
Lynn Emmons, a breast cancer survivor and former hospital staff, reproached Bubela and the board for passing chemotherapy treatment to Huntsville when Bracebridge has an increasing need for the treatment.
“Normally when people make decisions about changing the flow, they make them on future prediction, not on past record,” she said. “I can’t understand why you can’t put this off for a year.”
Larry Saunders, board chair for MAHC, reassured Emmons they could fight it, even though their contract is up, and they will have a discussion about it.
Six of the 12 hospital board members were present at the meeting to listen to the public feedback, unlike the Bracebridge meeting where only two attended.
Later in the question period, Dan Waters received resounding applause when he voiced his concern that the Bracebridge hospital would disappear like the Burk’s Falls hospital did.
He said the community is tired of Huntsville always coming out ahead and Bracebridge receiving the inferior services.
“This community, they’re not going to go to Huntsville, they’re going to go to Orillia,” he said, “then you’re going to lose your catchment. You’ve go to start treating us like people.”
Bubela said there is no hidden agenda to make Huntsville a stronger hospital; they plan to create two efficient, vibrant hospitals.
“It would be, I think, criminal if we tried to bring one above the other,” she said.
She reinforced that cataract surgery is not an interim program as Waters suggested, but something Bracebridge is strong in and she hopes will become a cataract area for North Simcoe.
Bubela acknowledged there would be some inconvenience for patients as they try to absorb $2.4 million, but said it will be less inconvenient than if the province starts cutting for them.
“What I don’t want to see happen is that we don’t meet our balanced budget,” she said, “the ministry comes in with a supervisor who may end up making some decisions that aren’t made-in-Muskoka decisions or we’re seen as one of those hospitals that the ministry is describing as not being efficient and where they’re not going to be giving the money.”
The funding change phases in a new structure where the amount of funding a hospital receives depends on how many patients are served at a hospital, the quality of care, the services delivered and the needs of the population. The new structure will also compensate hospitals for selected procedures they perform.
Several people questioned Bubela on bringing stroke rehab units to Huntsville and how MAHC can afford to bring in more services if they can’t afford the ones they have.
Bubela responded that the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care has determined there is adequate money in the system to fund stroke rehab centres throughout the province.
In essence, she said MAHC will lose money if they do not pursue a stroke rehab centre.
The ministry will look at the hospitals that do not have a stroke rehab centre, she said, determine how many strokes they see each year, weight it to figure out how many resources strokes use, then take the money from that hospital and give it to the hospital with a stroke rehab centre the patients will go to.
She said currently Parry Sound patients will not go to the Huntsville hospital for the stroke rehab centre, but if Parry Sound doesn’t create its own stroke rehab centre, they may come to Huntsville which would mean increased funding and more stroke rehab beds.